INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -
With the school year underway, Indiana’s teachers are still scrambling to
bring themselves and their students up to speed on the state’s new education
standards only months before students take a revamped, high-stakes exam
assessing their grasp of the new curriculum.
The Indiana
Department of Education hosted 19 summer training sessions to familiarize
teachers with the new standards, and also produced teacher resource guides
to help them adjust to the changes that will guide student learning for
years.
But schools are
still awaiting details of the retooled ISTEP+ test - Indiana’s standardized
test for grades 3 through 8 - that some 450,000 students will take next
spring to assess their mastery of the new math and English benchmarks.
J.T. Coopman, the
executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School
Superintendents, said there’s more uncertainty and trepidation among
teachers and administrators right now than he’s seen in his more than 40
years as an educator.
“They are just
like, ‘Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?’” Coopman said. “Obviously,
teachers and administrators want to do things the right way for the right
reasons, and that’s for their kids. And they feel like their backs are
against the wall.”
In March, Indiana
became the first state to pull out of the national Common Core standards,
driven by conservative and tea party concerns that the curriculum ceded too
much power to the federal government. The State Board of Education followed
in April by adopting the new academic standards that will guide what
students should learn in each grade.
Then in June, state
education officials learned that the state’s ISTEP+ test would have to be
revised for Indiana to retain its No Child Left Behind waiver, which
received a one-year extension Thursday from the U.S. Department of
Education.
Education
consultant Schauna Findlay Relue, one of the experts who evaluated Indiana’s
new standards, said the rapid changes have created confusion for Indiana’s
teachers as they work to write lesson plans for the new standards and await
details of the new test that will be aligned with them.
She said it’s
created a “troubling” situation for schools, primarily due to uncertainty
over the quick implementation of the new ISTEP+ test teachers have received
little information about and with no time for a pilot test.
“Normally there’s a
full school year and at least one or two summers from the time standards are
adopted before a test will change, but this time it’s happening in only
months,” Relue said.
ISTEP+ test scores
are crucial to schools because they’re used to calculate teacher pay and
school funding, as well as school grades under the state’s “A-F” system.
The Indiana State
Teachers Association urged Gov. Mike Pence on Tuesday to support freezing
Indiana’s school accountability system for one year because students are
expected to have lower-than-normal scores on the revamped test.
ISTA President
Teresa Meredith said federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s recent
announcement that states can apply for extra time before using student test
scores to judge teachers’ performance gives Indiana “newfound permission’”
to pause its accountability system.
“We’re diving into
a new test this spring not having ever seen it, or having a chance to get
our kids ready for it,” she said. “Let’s make sure we’re on the right track
and then continue the implementation after next year.”
Pence spokeswoman
Kara Brooks said Indiana’s accountability system is driven by the state
Legislature and decisions made by the State Board of Education, which she
said has not had time to “consider all the elements and options.”
Rather than a
one-year pause, Coopman believes the state’s accountability system should be
frozen for the next three years because of the time that will be needed to
train teachers in the new standards.
He hopes lawmakers
act next session to pause the system, saying if they do, “You’ll hear a huge
sigh of relief” from Indiana’s educators.